Residential Demand Response under Uncertainty

This paper considers a residential market with real-time electricity pricing and flexible electricity consumption profiles for customers. Such a market raises an optimisation problem for home automation systems where they need to schedule consumption activities to reduce costs, whilst maintaining a base level of comfort and convenience. This optimisation problem faces uncertainty in real-time prices, weather conditions, and occupant behaviour. The paper presents an online stochastic combinatorial optimisation algorithm that produces fast, high-quality solutions to this problem. This algorithm is compared with reactive control strategies and an approach using an expected scenario. Our results demonstrate the value of stochastic information and online stochastic optimisation in residential demand response.

Battle of the Attack Detection Algorithms: Disclosing cyber attacks on water distribution networks

The BATtle of the Attack Detection ALgorithms (BATADAL) is the most recent competition on planning and management of water networks undertaken within the Water Distribution Systems Analysis Symposium. The goal of the battle was to compare the performance of algorithms for the detection of cyber-physical attacks, whose frequency has increased in the last few years along with the adoption of smart water technologies. The design challenge was set for the C-Town network, a real-world, medium-sized water distribution system operated through programmable logic controllers and a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system. Participants were provided with data sets containing (simulated) SCADA observations, and challenged to design an attack detection algorithm. The effectiveness of all submitted algorithms was evaluated in terms of time-to-detection and classification accuracy. Seven teams participated in the battle and proposed a variety of successful approaches leveraging data analysis, model-based detection mechanisms, and rule checking. Results were presented at the Water Distribution Systems Analysis Symposium (World Environmental and Water Resources Congress) in Sacramento, California on May 21-25, 2017. This paper summarizes the BATADAL problem, proposed algorithms, results, and future research directions